


one more moondance with you, my love

by testdrive



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Manipulative Behavior, Shadow!Jack, still love u tho, the others are mentioned but have no dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28575933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/testdrive/pseuds/testdrive
Summary: late at night, after the beginning of the end of the world, sammy gets a phone call.(ep. 100 spoilers)
Relationships: Sammy Stevens/Jack Wright
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13





	one more moondance with you, my love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryyves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/gifts).



> title is from van morrison’s moondance, bc jack totally loves some good ol’ romantic jazz and none of you can take this from me!!

It started, like anything else in a town so centered on radio personalities, with a phone call.

In King Falls, there seemed to never be a shortage of them – complaint calls, robocalls, calls about seemingly haunted kitchen appliances, calls about the supposed second coming behind one of the only two regional Jack in the Boxes, calls about alien abductions and political campaigns, calls about love lost and love found, calls about goodbyes. It’s fitting then, something close to poetic, that it was a phone call that began everything, that started the search that led Sammy to King Falls in the beginning; that it would be a phone call to end his search, as well.  
  
The night goes like this: routine, business as usual – which, as Sammy has learned, is as much normalcy as King Falls allows – taken into the consideration and circumstances of the just-beginning apocalypse tucked neatly away in the depths of one Perdition Wood. The aftermath hadn’t been the safest, the rush of terror and panic before the need for a safe spot to be able to sit down and take a breather in. 

It had been a few weeks of jumping from safe house to safe house, neighborhood to neighborhood, a constant game of leapfrog, of trying to keep a steady pace of trying to be even just one step ahead of whatever was coming next.

Yet surprisingly, for the moment, everything was fine. It’s some time in the middle of the night, where Ben and Emily are asleep in another one of the guest rooms, Lily tucked into a bed of her own just a room over. Everything, for the moment, was still and silent and okay. That silence, that ease – it really should’ve been the first clue that something was about to give.

Sammy is jolted out of a dreamless sleep by his cell blasting the sudden noise that _it’s a marvelous night for a moondance,_ Van Morrison’s voice warming out of the tinny speakers into the cold air of the room. Sluggishly, Sammy considers the feeling that the song has some kind of nostalgic importance to it, something like a tone he’d set what felt like a hell of a long time ago for exactly _one_ _specific_ _contact_ – and by the time that registers in his sleep-deprived brain, he scrambles for his phone and slams down on the answer button.

“Hello? _Hello?_ Jack?" Well-worn desperation makes his voice sound strained, afraid. Like this moment, right here, was the only thing that mattered; and for the last five years, it had been. 

It all comes back in a flood, in that single moment of silence, everything that had happened since finding the car abandoned with the engine running in their driveway, how acidicly smoothly the world had gotten on after Jack’s disappearance, how easily their listeners had tuned their frequencies to other voices, other stories. How easily Shotgun Saturday Nights faded from view in suit. But it didn't matter. Everyone could forget about them, could turn away; but he would always remember, he would always hold that hollowness, tucked away safe in his chest.

Sammy is so blind with relief, with fear and hope and love, that he doesn’t remember the small fact that Jack had left his phone behind with the rest of his things, all the way back in California. He doesn’t think twice, doesn’t hesitate about it at all, with how King Falls bends what is and isn’t possible so effortlessly. Instead, Sammy _reacts_ , pulling himself up into a sitting position, hunched with both hands pressing the phone against his ear hard enough to leave an impression. 

“ _Sammy_." It sounds like a breath, all relief, elation, and it’s – _it’s_ _Jack_. Sammy can’t get over how much it sounds like a second chance. “I got through. Oh my god, I got _through_.“ 

Jack’s voice was everything it had been the night the devil’s doorstep broke open, and everything it hadn’t. It wasn’t harsh, or angry, it was just – _Jack_. Jack’s voice, the one Sammy knew, the one that had said every soft nothing whispered back and forth in California, belted every gently-more-than-tipsy chorus in every karaoke bar, who spoke about love like it had single-handed saved the world. And, well. Sammy couldn’t speak for the world, but it had certainly saved _him._

“ _Jack_ ," Sammy says, like it’s the only thing he can say, like it’s everything, and it _is_. It is.

“I’m home, Sammy, I’m here, I – I got out. I’m here. I'm here for _you_." _Got out,_ Jack says, and Sammy gets stuck on it. He can only imagine what it must’ve taken from him, in that place, where every shadow and plague and damnation calls a home. Sammy has seen glimpses, dreams, where the void feels like the materialization of the inbetween, where you can’t tell where the ocean meets the sky. Full of not-quites, full of almosts. A place that takes from you, and takes from you, until you are the same shade of hollowed as everything else. Sammy wonders what it’s like for Jack now, here, darkness flooded away by the light for the first time in so long.

Because, in a small way, he has an idea. 

Sammy has taken his loneliness and ventured into those woods in which no one returns from. Into the wood that isn’t. Three years and he knows better, he _does_ , but not then, not there, not in that place where the light cannot touch you. He knows what’s out there, now. He knows how it speaks, the tones it uses to draw you in, draw you closer, past the shadows and into the dark. 

He knows the void, how it sounds on the outside. How it echoes off the trees and reaches and does not grip softly. It tethers, and does not let go. Some nights, on some of the worst nights, Sammy thinks he is still there, in the cold, amongst the roots and the dirt. That he too, never left those woods, and disappeared into the dark.

Now, he thinks, how much worse could it have been inside, past through the gate? For years and years, so much time without light, what does that do to you? It hits him cold, seeping into his bones like ice dropped down the back of his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Sammy says it quick, like it was ripped from him, like it hurts. Like it’s something that has been hurting for longer than he can say, without everything shattering a little further. He says it with permanence, with reaching, like it’s important, like it means something, _everything_ , sitting heavy in his throat. He says it like it’s the same thing he’s been thinking since those long nights back in California, at the very beginning of all of this, of everything, back when the other half of their bed was just cold, rather than permanently empty. Back when their home was full of seemingly nothing but empty spaces growing between them, but at least there were still two people there, living, alive.

“Jack, I – I am _so fucking sorry_. I – I looked for you, I tried, for _years_ , I came here, and I – I followed you, I couldn’t –” Which one to pick? _Find you. Save you. Reach you. Love you._

“I would've found you, Sammy.” Jack’s soft voice cuts into the air before anxiety can drown all of the space between them. “Didn’t you say that? If the roles were reversed, I would've found you.” 

King Falls has been full of so many empty mornings, so many moments of memories Sammy can’t leave behind. But this will not be one of them. There’s a beat, and Sammy can imagine if they were together, if Jack was right here next to him, breathing and whole and alive, he would put a hand on his shoulder, something warm and grounding, like he had done so many times, before sliding it up to cup his jaw. 

“But don’t you see, baby? I did. I'm here. I'm right here.” Jack’s tone is soft, something slow and eased, like they’re back in their shitty college apartment again, telling old stupid stories until they of get too drunk to stay awake. It’s a good memory, out of all the ones that leave him cold and wanting, and it’s good. It’s so good, to feel like this again. To have Jack again.

“You were listening,” Sammy says abruptly, shock shattered in his tone, the memory all too clear, the call still ringing in his ears. _Your heart is in the void with me._ “You _heard_ me?” 

“You were the only thing worth listening to,” Jack laughs, soft and easy and everything Sammy has missed, wrapped up in a single sound. “You always were.”

There’s a sound in the background, harsh, like stone on stone, wind, the edges of whispers. A rattling, like the trees were trembling. 

Sammy wonders for a moment where Jack could be, if he stumbled out of the doorstep itself or somehow escaped somewhere different, a rabbit-hole tucked away in some hidden corner of the woods of King Falls. He thinks of all the times he’s hiked out in them, weeding his way through the pines, over the creeks, across the landscape. He’s thinking of how he holds the forests outside of town in a whole different realm of what he remembers of Perdition Wood, when something hits him.

“I don’t understand," Sammy says, suddenly feeling ice cold, like he’s out in Lake Hatchenhaw, like it’s the middle of winter. “How did you get out? The door was open, but the book, the book said –” 

Jack starts laughing, something edging close to deep-belly and _loud_ , and it stops him short, because it sounds... _different_ from what Sammy remembers. Sounds – changed, in a way he can’t place.

“In a town that is basically a beacon for everything weird and supernatural, you think a dusty old book can give you all the right answers? I think you’re mistaking the forest for the trees, here, babe. _I'm home,_ " Jack repeats. “It’s over now. I’m me, I’m here, but it’s never really home without you.”

Sammy smiles, but something still tugs at him. There’s still too much of the unknown leaking beneath the floorboards, that has settled sharp into the air, like an uncuttable fog. It has a habit of getting into everything, seeps into you, becomes you, in a way that he fears never really leaves.

“It hasn’t – it hasn’t really ever felt like home since you–” Sammy pauses, searches still for the right word. Since it wasn’t really a leaving, more of something so intrinsically missing, something that was solid and sturdy and wonderfully there, always, until one day it was gone, the rug slipped out from underneath like it’d never been there at all. Like he woke up and the whole world had changed overnight, but only his, stuck watching the days go by like practiced clockwork for everyone else.

“I know. I know, but I’m out. I'm here now, Sammy, out in the light. I’m in – the woods, somewhere, I think, I don't know; it’s dark, it’s cold, I’m looking for a sign,” there’s a pause, another rustle of leaves. A branch snapping. “I’m looking for _you_. I’ve been looking for you, like you’ve been looking for me. We’re so close, now. I want to see you. I’ve wanted to see you for so long. I literally cannot wait another second, so come on and get your ass out here, Stevens.”

Sammy laughs, sharp and high, cutting through the silence of the room. It feels like a sound he hasn’t made in years, something that echoes back to him unfaded. The day he’s been waiting for, all of these years for, is finally here. It’s right now. It’s knocking on his door, it’s lost in the woods. 

“This is insane. This is crazy, this is happening, jack in the box _jesus_.” Sammy’s hands are shaking. He’s shaking all over, but he’s stuck staring at his hands. “Wow, _wow_ , I just. I mean – Lily’s here too, you know that, already, but she’s here, looking for you, god – Jack, we’ve. We’ve been through so much to find you, and you’re finally here, and we’re all going to be together, like a _family_ , finally all together–” 

“All?” Jack interrupts, toneless, something ringing a little too hollow. Sammy falters, a skip in his speech before continuing. 

“I – I mean, yeah, Lily’s going to tackle you like no rugby player you’ve ever faced, I don’t think she’s ever going to leave your side, and I _really_ don’t blame her for it. And Ben – oh, Ben’s going to love you as soon as you both start discussing all of your love for paranormal shit, and Emily’ll give you a run for your money, and we’ll – we’ll be together. All of us.” 

The call is too silent, for a moment. Nothing but air, the clinging strings of static. For a split second, Sammy thinks the call has dropped, that the shadows have come for them, and he’s about to pull the phone from his ear when he hears Jack speak again. 

“Sammy I – I don’t think you understand.” Jack’s tone is cautious, wary, maybe even a little afraid. “It’s like… do you remember, that night you came to see me?” 

Sammy tilts his head in his confusion, as if Jack could see the motion. Sammy hasn’t seen Jack since... since California, since the night before finding the car on the driveway. Since the day everything fell apart, the day the world stopped turning, the day something sharp cut into his heart, and hasn't left since.

Jack must hear Sammy’s hesitation, because he clarifies a moment later.

“That night when you came to the doorstep. I called you there, called you closer. Didn’t you hear me? Didn’t you feel it, that it was me? I called for _you_ , and you came. You came home to me.”

“That was you?” It comes out a whisper, something secret and guilty. Sammy tries to remember it better, clearer, like he could hold up a microphone or magnifying glass to his memories and hear the voice in perfect tone once more. But his memory is muddled, messy, full of shapes and noises of things that are clear only in nightmares, that his brain has had the decency to obscure, to mist away the sharp edges of, hands reaching and darkness creeping and the world rising to meet him. 

When he dreams, the voices he hears always change. But they’ve never sounded like Jack. He would recognize it, wouldn’t he? Had it been too long?

“Walt found you,” Jack’s voice moves like he’s nodding, “but not before I did. You were so close, Sammy. You nearly reached me – it would’ve been perfect. We have loved in the dark for so long, it's comfortable here, it's what we know.”

“But it’s _safe_ here.” Something in Sammy doesn’t understand, but still sparks to argue for King Falls, for everything they’ve given him here. For everything he’s given back. “Well, aside from a few major outliers, but they’re not completely unavoidable, and things are shifting, this – it’s not. It’s not like before. We could make a home here. We could really _live,_ out here. Together. _Together_ , together. I wanted it before, I always did, but – I’m not scared anymore.”

The idea has been simmering softly in the back of his mind for a time now, more so on nights with alcohol running through his blood like a marathon. Like it could be something tangible and real, a life here where he is whole in all the ways he isn’t, without Jack. Everyone gathered together, out in King Falls, like somewhere to call home and mean it, really mean it. 

It’s a beautiful dream. Sometimes, Sammy thinks it’s the most fitting thing in the world for the word _beautiful_.

Jack sighs, something sharp that cuts into the softness of that dream. 

“I know, Sammy, I _know_. But it’s more than that. That’s what we wanted before, I remember, too. But nowhere is safe, not like you want.” It sounds like something he’d heard some blurry face say to him in a dream, once: _your body isn’t big enough to hold all of your love, is it? So you let it go. So you tried to move on, with every aching step farther from what you had. How long till you can’t go any further? How long till you have nothing left to name? How long till you lose yourself?_

“You pretend, Sammy, it’s what you do. You act like it’s easy to let go of the best part of yourself, the happiness you had, the part you shared with _me_. And soon it’s believable enough that even you start to believe it, and because of that facade, your friends called it courage _._ They think some prophecy calls you _protector_.” 

A huff, air blown into the receiver.

“But where is your courage, protector? Who have you ever even been able to protect? Your first day, an abduction broadcasted live, like it was _waiting_ for you. Your first anniversary, another, right on cue; and don’t get me started, Stevens, on how you couldn’t last even two years here without _shotgun_ coming to knock on your middle-of-nowhere station’s door. And you thought – _third time’s the charm_ , didn’t you? Gave it everything you had left. You came so close, Sammy, you came so close. You did everything, and it still wasn’t enough.” 

Jack's tone is scathing, but there is no anger. It burns like ice, sticks to him like frostbite. Sammy can’t speak through it, all of Jack’s words jumbling together in his ears, cloying in his head, trying to keep up even as he attempts to pick apart truth from trust. 

“And when Lily came to you, followed your trail to right here, wanting your help, asking for answers you didn’t want to give, what did you do? What you always do; you hardballed it. You even made them _promise_ , worried that they would follow you right in. But you couldn’t say it without an edge, could you? You got afraid, you got defensive. You couldn’t lay it all out, like you couldn’t with me. You really haven’t changed at all.” 

There’s something soft about the way he says it, like a tender nothing, a secret passed in whispers beneath shared sheets. 

“Aren’t you seeing the trend here, Sammy? Do you see it now, the connection, your role? I was taken _because of_ _you_. How long were you going to go until it was someone else? How long were you going to act like this was going to work, that you could _save me_? That this was all for something, bigger than any of you? Bigger than _us_? You are going to lose, out here, in this little town, and I – _I love you,_ Sammy. You can’t do this to yourself, to your friends. You care about them so much. How much more danger are you going to put them in, by staying? By trying to fight this? Sammy. _Baby_. You’ve done enough. You’ve done so well. Please, let me save you. Let’s finally put an end to all of this pain. Come to me. Come home.”

Sammy closes his eyes, breath coming out too quick, a wildfire in his lungs. Everything feels shifted, like the world’s off-axis, like this is just another dream where gravity has betrayed us, and so he pretends it is. He thinks in steps, how to change what’s causing it all, the rush, the fear, the ache, thinks in emotions he’s trying so hard to name, now, to know in all the ways he pushed down before.

Here is the story you tell, and the control it grants you: this is a version of you, retold. Without the wounds you don’t speak of. Without the pressure of all of your secrets within your chest and how they keep you company. The void is inside you now, and you do not know how to get it out. You do not know how to not let it become you, and now what else is left to hold your hand, if not for loneliness? 

You are fighting for something, something that is saying let me come back to you, let me remember every piece of you before it is too late. Before you are gone for good. But come back, you almost say, in the dream, crying into the dark, into nothingness, to something, anything, everything, please come back home to me – but the sky remains empty. It always does, even long after Sammy wakes up.

The pad of his thumb wears into the metal of the engagement ring, and he lets the softness of it sink into him as Jack’s words sink into the silence, and this moment feels small enough to hold, so hold me, he almost says, in the quiet dark. Hold me. 

Sammy's heart, in the void. _Him_ , in the void. Home, in the void, or somewhere close enough to it? To risk losing Jack, a fourth time? Could he really take that chance now, _especially_ now – when there is so much at stake? When he could lose him forever, a gamble too big to hold?

Sammy has paused, breathing, thinking he’s just about to do something, anything, to calm down the rushing in his ears, the beating in his heart. He feels like he’s on the edge, teetering, and moves to call in Ben, maybe, or Lily, to help him calm down, on instinct. To reach out, to call for help, like he’s been working on. Something that feels a bit like healing. 

His hand lands on the edge of the red comforter and begins to pull it back, when Jack’s voice comes through the receiver once more, small, heartbroken, a little angry, now; he sounds just like he did during those last few weeks, all the way back in California. All that time ago.

“You gave up on me once. Don’t do it again, Sammy, _please_. I can’t lose you again.” 

A repetition in tragedy: a man goes looking for home but finds there is nothing waiting for him. Is this not the same story? Have we not been through this before? A void’s not a void unless you know what’s missing. Until you know what’s been taken away, until you know what has left.

There’s a dream he has, where Sammy is pounding on some door, and every door stands unrelenting. No one answers, no matter where he is. His bedroom door. The radio station’s door. Rose’s. Ben’s apartment. Jack’s and his place, under a canopy of all their California dreams. It never ends differently, and nothing ever changes aside from the location of the night. It’s as if his subconscious is asking him: where is your home, Sammy Stevens? Who are you? Do you even know? Do you want to? What are you afraid of? What do you want? What are you willing to give for it? What do you have, anymore?

He has – well, he used to have Jack. But now, there’s so much _more_. More than he ever imagined being allowed to have, more than he’d ever dreamed. But he still needs Jack, still needs the heavy piece of sky to be finally able to rise out of his chest. He has longed and prayed and become a lighthouse in a sea of thunderstorms, looking for light in all that broken dark.

The story repeats, the story rhymes. This is what Ben believes, isn’t it? That love is something imperative. That love is something that the world stops for, becomes rewritten for. But someone needs to go first. Someone needs to be the catalyst. 

If the void is the place where everything promises to stay alive, up and out in the dark, where this longing has an end, is it worth it? If he is the ruin to the monument of King Falls, to the doorstep, to the heart of everything?

What Sammy should think is: _if he breaks from the group, it breaks the prophecy, and they can’t stop the shadows. They can’t stop whatever is going to come out of the devil’s doorstep. They can’t stop anything._ Instead, he thinks: _Jack is here. Jack is home. He needs me. I need him. What else matters now, when we're both finally here, when I never thought I'd get this far?_

Sammy knows that as soon as he steps out that door he’s going to be asked questions. Questions he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to answer, or even justify. But maybe he can try, somehow – make everyone understand that maybe it’s not the old Jack, but it’s him enough. A Jack tangible enough to latch onto, in so long, for the first time in years. It's _Jack_ , and Sammy is not willing to lose him again.

“You’re coming home,” Sammy promises, letting out a breath. “We’re going home.”


End file.
